Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday October 05, 2012 @07:03AM
from the martian-marketing dept.

cylonlover writes "NASA launched a strategic partnership with location-based social networking site foursquare in 2010 with the first-ever check-in from the International Space Station (ISS) by astronaut Doug Wheelock. Now the space agency has gone one better with the first check-in on another planet thanks to its Curiosity Mars rover. Since fellow foursquare users will have a hard time checking in on the Red Planet themselves, they'll instead be able to earn a Curiosity-themed badge for visiting locations relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The badge will be available later this year and is designed to spark the scientific curiosity of foursquare users by encouraging them to visit science centers, laboratories and museums."

I was going to make a point along those lines - is this going to attract the attention of the potential-STEM crowd or just clue them in to the fact that the mainstream doesn't give two shits about science (and is enamored with silly but highly profitable frivolities instead) earlier than desired?

No, curiosity will be a contestant on America's Got Talent and they'll have people text their opinion of who they think is more talented: Curiosity for landing on Mars or some girl who plays the theme to Gossip Girl on a marimba made of partially-filled Coke bottles. I bet the marketers win.

So what? Nobody cared about lunar geology or the LEM's stability problems, either. They cared about astronaut ice cream and a guy playing golf on the moon. If it weren't for stunts like this, nearly everyone would forget that we landed an SUV on Mars at all. When Curiosity tweets, or releases a Will.i.am single, or does something else that the public actually cares about, it reminds people how NASA can do awesome things.

Like it or not, the way to get more space funding is to put popular fads in space.

...Is that curiosity could get a GPS fix from that far away. Unless it is locating by cell tower or wifi. Though the presence of GPS, wifi, or cell towers would be a much more interesting find then the water it was sent up there to look for.

there's now a planet enum internally (only mars + earth for now... hopefully we go do something interesting on the moon again soon), and an alternate latlng field that we're storing the planet-specific coordinates in. The web rendering code knows to look for the astralLatLng if planet != earth. So that all our current clients and api consumers don't explode , we're pushing out the earth latlng of mission control via the public api.

She is brilliant for sure. And I was definitely "in love" with her when she blasted through the atmosphere and made that killer landing. But now that she spends so much time on studying rocks I feel we have drifted (or roved;-) ) . I love her but I am in not "in love" with her now.

What is foursquare? I just looked and it looks like some cut-down facebook thingy

It's basically the most self-indulgent, navel-gazing, self-important-attention-whoring, up-their-own-arse and downright pointless aspects of social media distilled to a level of 100% pure worthlessness.

This is quite obviously another would-be public-attention-grabbing stunt along the lines of the Will.I.Am transmission a few weeks back, and it's open for debate which of the two are worse.

My "multiple and repetitive posts" constituting a grand total of *two*, i.e. the minimum required for you to be technically correct, but not enough to avoid your response coming across as whiny exaggeration anyway.:-)

NASA should be doing pure science, and that should be reason enough to excite Joe Public. I mean hell, I can't get over the fact that I can see detailed images of Mars from the comfort of my own living room. If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would never have believed it. Yet, there we are - humanity is there through its machines. It should blow people's minds!

Instead of that, NASA is regularly forced to do shitty high-profile, useless and pathetic "interstellar internet" stunts with shitty dotcoms to attract attention, and presumably funding. That's how sad, uneducated and blaze people have become.

It is inevitable that the latest in technology and science becomes commonplace. As for this stunt, I doubt it's taking NASA much effort to do it and if it can create good PR and education people, it's a good thing. It might be "sad", but these are the alternatives to approaches that won't work.

It is inevitable that the latest in technology and science becomes commonplace.

The problem is that the technology isn't anywhere near commonplace. I will discontinue my "WOW" response to NASA missions when I can afford to launch a probe to explore an asteroid or planet, and take a trip to the moon for the weekend.

It's kinda cool, but definitely not any more mindblowing than getting video of a man on the moon.. especially since our computing and telecommunications prowess is (or at least, should be) a lot more advanced these days.

... and the folks in mission control will be required to drink a Coca Cola during when they are interviewed. They will also be required to say things like "The Penzoil, Gatoraid, Whizzo-Butter Rover had a good day today."

If you don't hear about something happening, how are you going to be interested in it? This drives home the point that mars is a real location and it makes people feel more connected as it now relates to their daily lives. I think it's arrogant to call people uneducated for not showing an initial interest in the topics that YOU show interest in. Different motivators for different people.

NASA should be doing pure science, and that should be reason enough to excite Joe Public. I mean hell, I can't get over the fact that I can see detailed images of Mars from the comfort of my own living room. If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would never have believed it. Yet, there we are - humanity is there through its machines. It should blow people's minds!

I dunno.. when I was a kid there was images from Viking and they don't look that different to me.

The science is way more advanced sure but in terms of public wow factor there's not a whole lot more to get excited about.

I mean hell, I can't get over the fact that I can see detailed images of Mars from the comfort of my own living room. If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would never have believed it.

Just out of curiosity (if you'll pardon the pun), just how much older than sixty (being charitable) are you? Because such things have clearly been coming since the first blurry images from Viking popped up on the boob tube in the comfort of my parent's living room back in the seventies when *I* was a kid.

Actually, it's pretty important. The rovers don't communicate directly with Earth. They transmit to satellites orbiting Mars, which relay it to ground stations here on Earth, which relay it to JPL. So adding another hop to the Internet isn't that big an investment of resources, and is probably good practice for when this will become more commonplace (do you really want to coordinate the broadcast sched

Sure, that is a big part of NASA's mission. But if we don't find ways to entice young people to pursue science, where will that leave us? What's the harm in creating a little publicity? It seems to me that a stunt like this can go a long way towards advancing science, in the long run.

NASA should be doing pure science, and that should be reason enough to excite Joe Public.

This just in: not everybody likes the same stuff you do.

NASA is regularly forced to do shitty high-profile, useless and pathetic "interstellar internet" stunts with shitty dotcoms to attract attention

So negative! Did you ever think the people at JPL/NASA did this because it's fun? There are lots of us who absolutely have our minds blown by the success of Curiosity AND think stuff like this is neat too.

I find it hard to believe that Curiosity actually did the check-in from Mars. It's more likely a NASA PR person did it, just like they do for their Twitter posts "from Mars" (see @MarsPhoenix for example).

I follow Curiosity on FaceBook (don't judge me) and it's silly that it's written from it's point-of-view, but seeing it announce that it would soon be Mayor of Mars actually made me laugh. Funnier than when it announced "I did a science!"

It's entertainingly done, and I get a feed of it's pictures without having to remember to check for them. Most missions are 'fire and forget" to much of the population, but this is staying in the news a lot more.